Echoes of Callisto's Death
by hmelton
Summary: [Superman Unbound, Sailor Moon, Zatanna, King Arthur]The year is 1940 King Arthur returns and the clandestine war between Avalon and Lancelot's league reaches the boiling point resulting in the death of both Senshi Callisto and Senshi Titan.


**Echoes of Callisto's Death **

This is a Fanfic set in the Superman Unbound Shared Universe.

Copyrights no infringement or profit is intended

Lois Clark the new adventures of Superman is copyright to Warner Bros. and DC Comics.

Sailor Moon is copyright to DiC, Toei, Kodansha, and Naoko Takeuchi.

Zatanna is copyright to DC comics.

Robur is the creation of Jules Verne and depending on where you live, will or will not be in the public domain.

King Arthur is modified from the public domain legend

Indiana Jones is copyright Lucasfilm Ltd  
which inspired my Sir Jones "The last Knight of the round table" an adventuring American archeologist who does not own a whip and rather likes snakes.  
-

NOTES

I couldn't find any reference to Zatanna's grandmother's name, just her grand father "Luigi Zatara".  
I picked Milessa as the name of Luigi's french wife in 1940.  
The Catalyst for this Fanfic was Arthur's Hansens suggestion "that maybe the Zatara clan speaking spells backwards was due to a damaged Silver Millennium artifact".

**Echoes of Callisto's Death **

-

_Year 1940 Taken from "History of the Avalon Senshi" compressed abridged 2001 edition requested by princess Serenity.  
_

_An adventuring American archaeologist looking into legends of the King Arthur's round table and a pair of English Historians investigating rumours about the round table in Germany come together. Reluctantly the archaeologist and the English Historians agree to work together and eventually discover the Round Table being used as a teleportation device by the Lancelot League. They also discover the factories and stockpile of super weapons that were to be used in the invasion of England._

_The two Historian are forced to reveal themselves as representatives of Avalon named Arthur and Althea, the returned King Arthur and his grand daughter the current lady of the lake and Princess Titan. Princess Titan manages to destroy the underground factories and most of the stockpiled advanced German equipment, but is killed when the League's own Princess Callisto uses Merlin's Round Table to teleport in and surprise her, minutes later Princess Callisto unaware she is facing the legendary King Arthur makes a careless mistake and is be-headed with Excalibur._

_King Arthur and the archaeologist manage to recover both Henshin rods and escape, but they lose the Callisto Henshin rod when King Arthur cannot disarm the fail-safe and it returns to the oldest Child of the last princess Callisto. They are also unable to destroy the King's round table or remove the black kryptonite devices embedded deep within and are forced to leave it in the hands of the Germans and Lancelot League operatives. _

_The American archaeologist now the Last Knight of the Round Table and the despondent King Arthur make there way back to England and then Avalon._

_King Arthur and Avalon are unaware that the Callisto Henshin rod is now effectively lost to the Lancelot League. Lady Callisto's oldest son, Luigi was exiled to a minor post in France for disagreeing with his mother and the League council, when the Henshin rod appeared to him he spent a few minutes mourning his mother's death and then gathered his five year old son John and wife, escaping the Lancelot League in the confusion of the fall of France.  
_

_Luigi eventually makes his way to America where he changes his last name to Zatara and goes into hiding with his wife and son._

-ECHOES-

Callisto screamed as the sword sheared effortless through the titanium bracer on her right arm and continued down cutting the same arm off an inch from her shoulder, jumping instinctively she landed over a hundred feet away immediately losing her balance and rolling several times, moaning each time her stump encountered the muddy ground.

Staggering to her feet Callisto fought to stay conscious her vision going gray as her power worked to stop the blood loss and numb the pain. Blinking several times her sight finally cleared causing her to snarl, the bulky swords man was already halfway to her making ten foot leaps.

Lady Callisto still grinding her teeth in pain had hoped the rubble created during her fight with Lady Titan would be a hindrance, pushing the pain out of her mind and cursing her own arrogance, Callisto raised her remaining arm even as a thought circled in her mind Who was this man? No sword wielded by a man should have been able to hurt her, even the swords of power still used by the older high level Avalon operatives had never done more than scratch her.

Allowing her enemy to approach closer she exaggerated her sway pretending to have trouble keeping her balance as she waited several seconds finally launching an attack just as the man started to leap a small crater, caught in mid air and unable to dodge, her attack hit the bulky british professor mid chest and carried him back thirty feet pinning him in the rubble, of a collapsed wall.

Callisto only had an instant to see him struggle to rise and start to ponder how the man survived, it didn't make sense, even in her weakened state, a five hundred mile an hour blast of super cooled ice crystals should have cut him in two.

A moment later machine gun fire from a shattered tank broke her concentration and knocked her to the ground. The gun fire wasn't really a direct threat, her senshi aura easily deflected the large caliber bullets, but it was keeping her from targeting the man with the sword. Ignoring the geysers of dirt as well as the impacts of bullets on her head, shoulders and back she focused and silenced that damnable American's machine gun. It was to much to hope her attack had harmed the American, but it did slice off the barrel of the machine gun and dig a couple of inches into the armour swivel plate effectively jamming the mechanism.

Cursing Robur's failure in 1905, she rolled over, her eyes widened as she saw that the portly British professor wasn't, her attack had blasted away an over sized suit revealing ancient Avalon plate armour. Jogged by the emblem emblazoned across the armour's chest plate ancient memories rose from her two rings, rings given her mother by Sir Lancelot himself, allowing her to finally put a name to the man's face.

"Arthur" saying the name even as she mentally deleted the preceding king, now she understood reaching out with her senses, Lady Callisto cursed as her suspicions proved true she could feel Lady Triton's power linked to Arthur's armour and through that Excalibur.

Scrambling to her feet Lady Callisto, was frightened, normally even the legendary Excalibur could barely scratch a Senshi, but boosted by the power of another Senshi the blade's cutting aura had overcome her protection and that single attack allowed in a moment of victorious arrogance had hurt her badly.

Focusing as much power as she could Lady Callisto launched an attack at Arthur, her heart skipping a beat when his armour's avoidance protocols turned a direct hit into a glancing blow gaining her only a few seconds respite.

Snarling at the skill he displayed, she watched as he carefully used a shuffling walk that kept both feet on the ground, it had slowed his approach considerably, but it gave his avoidance protocols a better than even chance at dodging any attack.

Lady Callisto hesitated unsure what to do, here was one of her people's legendary enemies alive, believed dead for over a thousand years, she wanted to kill him badly, but his armour's link to a henshin rod and her weakened condition made him more than a match.

Coming to a decision Lady Callisto started to turn, planning to jump away and use the converted round table to teleport home, she never got the chance, not seeing the American pop up from a rubble pile and toss two grenades.

Her son would later discover that her last memories were of being tossed into the air by an explosion followed by skidding across the ground and the glimpse of a shadow connected with the flash of a descending sword.

-

Chief Councilman Ralph Nilgerson slammed his fist on the desk and glared at the man in the monitor and said "I don't care how much rubble is sealing the Teleportation center's entrances get those reinforcements out of the mountain, Lady Callisto is facing a Avalon Senshi and an undetermined number of Avalon operatives!" Switching video feeds abruptly Ralph's features changed from anger to worry as he gazed through another camera this one focused on the councils interrogation chamber. Currently it held Doctors working on the girl that was a fourteen year old version of his Lady Callisto.

Standing up Ralph started pacing the length of the Council's executive command center his eyes never quite leaving the display showing Princess Callisto. He was worried Princess Callisto's sudden collapse had him thinking something might have happened to Lady Callisto. Lady Callisto ruthless use of her Henshin rod's memory function had resulted in a younger twin that had a closer connection than any natural twin ever had and it had given the two an uncanny ability to sense the other.

Princess Callisto's collapse a few minutes before had happened without warning and had the entire council scared it hadn't taken long to determine that she wasn't breathing and lacked a heart beat. It was almost Ironic, but the closeness of the councils interrogation chambers and the associated life support systems had probably saved her life, even so the young girl had been dead for at least 45 seconds before they had gotten her into life support.

Pausing directly in front of the display as one of the doctors moved and gave the camera an un-obstructed view of the young woman, Ralph frowned the lesions that had spontaneously appeared on Princess Callisto's neck bothered him and only the absence of the Callisto henshin rod reassured him that his Lady Callisto was not dead.

He watched as one of the large medics assisting the doctors made hand signs, the discrete signs were geared for telling the condition of a person undergoing heavy interrogation and designed to give the council members overseeing the subject an idea of how hard they could push. In this case they indicated that the patient was off life support and still unconscious, but appeared to be recovering, brain activity was increasing from a coma like state.

His worry slightly mollified Ralph allowed contingency plans to settle back into his subconscious for the moment his power base appeared to be secure, all he required was at least one of the Callisto's to survived the younger or the older, it didn't really matter.

-

Milessa stood frozen trying to blink or look away as she fearfully watched an object hover before Luigi, she was terrified, an unearthly gray white flare had washed out the headlines of her Paris paper sending her to her feet, only to be caught by the light of a cold gray fire floating at eye level to her seated husband.

Milessa's surprise had changed to fear when two gentle pops heralded the appearance of a pair of rings, coming from nowhere and going into orbit around the hovering crystal rod. The rod's inner fire reached out to envelop the circling rings even as she suddenly realized it was also holding her frozen in it's cold grip.

Milessa would always be unsure, but minutes or seconds later a heart tearing sob from her husband and a single whispered word broke her trance allowing her to blink and turn eyes toward him, his paper forgotten a hand slowly reaching into the gray flames covering the flaring rod.

Focusing on Luigi's face only added confusion to Milessa's frozen fear, in the ten years of their marriage she had always been able to read her husband like an open book and now all she could see was a determination laced with a deep grief as his hand rose into the cold gray fire pouring from the rod. She couldn't understand, couldn't he feel the deathly cold bite of those unearthly flames?

"No", Milessa desperately whispered straining trying to move against an unseen force that encased her like sand, he was going to touch the fire, why wasn't he scared? Why was he so sad? Milessa watched helplessly as the rings broke orbit and floated to her husband's hand each settling on a finger leaving his wedding band to separate them, moments later his hand closed on the fiery rod.

Milessa staggered forward toward her husband as the unseen sand seemed to erode away in an unfelt wind, reaching she tried to grab his arm only to gasp and scramble backwards away from the burning cold flames now washing over Luigi's form and spilling across the floor driving her into a corner and trapping her there whimpering behind a overturned table.

-

Luigi had been surprised and very suspicious, at the sight of his mother's henshin rod, he had hoped to never to hold that rod and when Lady Callisto and the League council had exiled him to the German embassy in France twenty years ago he had thought that legacy had been denied any future daughter or grand daughter.

Slowly raising a hand toward the rod Luigi let out an involuntary sob followed by "mother" as he felt a resonance form with the henshin rod, he knew it and it knew him, there was no question it was Lady Callisto's rod of power, through it he again felt an echo from that distant moon and no power on Earth could counterfeit that.

Luigi allowed the link to form and with a single thought he guided the orbiting rings to his fingers, never really feeling or noticing them settle as he focused on the Callisto henshin rod now firmly held in the same hand.

Putting his grief aside Luigi frowned, this shouldn't be, fourteen years ago one of the few friends he still had in the League had visited and informed him that the council had finally developed a cloning method. His friend had also mentioned that his mother had just given birth to a new heir an "aunt" to him and a younger twin sister to herself.

He had even met his younger "aunt", his mother had shown up for his wedding and she had been in tow, his heart had went out to the four year old even as he felt a chill enter his soul, what had happened to the League, how had they sunk so low?

Everyone had thought the little girl had been so cute the way she dressed just like her mother, but it went much deeper and only Luigi had the insight to recognized the signs of a child far to young forced into using a Silver Millennium artifact's memories. The little girls mannerisms and movement weren't the normal actions of a child trying to act like her mother.

Luigi bit his lower lip his "aunt's" link to the Callisto Henshin rod had been nearly as strong as his mothers, if she was still alive the Henshin rod should have found her. His worry and fear deepening for his family especially his son John, Luigi came to his feet as he realized what it meant for his son, they needed to start running now as soon as the Lancelot League realized he had the Henshin Rod they would come for it and his son.

After a couple of fear blinded steps first in one direction and then in another he stopped and frowned, he needed to know where to run, he was going to have to hide from both the League and Avalon, but he needed to know what had happened how could both have died? Had Avalon finally discovered Mystery and launched a surprise Senshi led invasion of his hidden homeland?

Taking a deep breath and seating himself on the floor in a meditation stance he started concentrating, he was about to try something that would have been an automatic execution during the Silver Millennium. Men even a Senshi's first born son could only form a low level link with a henshin rod, the Silver Millennium had been quite chauvinistic, they weren't allowed to access the memories and only the worst situations imaginable would allow a man to even hold a Henshin rod and form a meager link to it's power.

Luigi focused choosing his thoughts carefully as he used his masculine limited access to the Henshin rod to order it to cross link with his badly damaged Judge's teaching bracelet. Both were artifacts given only to women and as such both should have contained the same protective circuits to prevent full access by a man's mind or aura.

The protective circuits were supposed to be a fail-safe design, removing or damaging the security circuits should also destroy the esper link circuit and the associated memories stored in the synthetic diamond and ruby. But somehow nearly seventy years ago an ignorant Jeweler unaware of the bracelets true origin or power had reshaped it into a center piece for an ornate necklace and unknowingly succeeded in doing what experts for twenty thousand years had said was impossible.

Focusing not on the Henshin rod in his hand, but on the bracelet hanging as a amulet around his neck Luigi gathered his thoughts to use the damaged artifact. Making the bracelet work required very high levels of concentration, in the nearly two hundred years of experience before his exile he had never seen an artifact that had required more effort to use.

Settling deeper into a trance Luigi isolated out his link to the bracelet normally he no longer needed this much preparation to reach the required concentration levels, but now there was no room for error, illegally tapping the power and memories of a Henshin rod, wasn't something to try with a divided attention.

Putting his grief for his mother completely from his mind and pushing his worry for his family deep into his subconscious Luigi carefully crafted the mental image/pattern he wanted to send. Like most League teenagers Luigi had been taught the trick of voicing a rough approximation of his mental command, the words held no actual meaning for a Silver Millennium artifact, but they did serve to increase an inexperienced person's esper threshold. Like most, Luigi had out grown words within six months of being given his first artifact.

He had tried using the voicing technique with the Judges bracelet, but it hadn't been quite enough to get reliable results, eventually he had hit on speaking backwards and that had worked after a fashion, it had been nearly twelve years and he still had to vocalize his commands backwards to use the bracelet.

Taking a deep breath he spoke slowly saying ".SRUOH XIS TSAP EHT YROMEM S'OTSILLAC YDAL WOHS"

Slumping slightly in exhaustion and relief, as a three dimensional image formed before him, it had worked and better yet the security hadn't fried him or in this case explosively crystallize the water in his body. Settling into a more relaxed position Luigi almost smiled at the Irony, the League council had stripped him of his personal Silver Millennium artifacts and then had thought to torture him with an incredible waste of a precious splinter by giving him an artifact they thought doubly useless to him.

Luigi cringed as he heard a gasp and a whimper from behind him, turning and looking over his shoulder he saw Milessa's fearful eyes peeking over an up ended table.

Silently berating himself for forgetting that his wife had also been in the room, he raised a hand and motioned to her as he forced a sad smile and then saying "Honey I can explain, this is a family legacy my mother has." Pausing for a couple of heart beats Luigi regained control and continued "Has died and beyond expectation that legacy has come to me."

-

Luigi continued to speak softly as his wife hesitantly made her way to his side saying "I've activated the Callisto henshin rod." Hesitating yet again he frowned trying to find a way to explain just what a henshin rod was and what it was showing. After a moment he continued "Think of the rod as my mothers magic wand and I've asked it to show me the past." Cringing at having to use the word magic he took a breath and blurted out "It's going to show mother's last six hours. I need to know what could kill a Senshi."

After Milessa had settled clumsily at his side, he hugged her and whispered "I'm sorry Milessa for not telling you of my true back ground. This isn't really magic." Stopping at the look of complete disbelief on his wife's face, he finally said after several seconds of thought "It isn't magic at least not your def..."

"Is that a unicorn!" turning from his wife he looked at the holographic display generated by his bracelet and saw his mother's hands in her private stable giving sugar cubes to the horses and mice to the pair of Griffins and a unicorn also stabled there. Idly he thought "This isn't going to be easy."

-

Milessa listened to a distant clock strike one AM as she carefully positioned her husband's head on a cushion taken from a chair, about an hour ago Luigi had broken down crying and a few minutes after that he had drifted into an exhausted sleep tucking a rug around her husband she left the room. Now he needed to sleep, seeing his mother be-headed from her own point of view didn't need to be fresh in his mind, getting out of the German embassy to France during war was going to take skill and a lot of it.

Trembling slightly Milessa left the study and made her way toward their son's room. She felt sick, reality had taken on the feathery feel of a nightmare. A nightmare she suspected the world would not soon wake from, her confidence in France's defenses had been shaken by what she had seen and she was never going to forget the sad laugh her husband had given and the retort of "One wall does not a fortress make." when she had mentioned the Maginot line.

Pausing at her son's room she quickly checked on him, thinking on what she had learned and seen in the past seven hours, Unicorns, Griffins, an under water city, a battle between two Sorceress one who used wind and water and her own mother in law that fought with ice and a freezing fire and then there was her executioner a man Luigi swore was King Arthur a man not seen by the League in well over a thousand years.

-

Arthur Pendragon groaned softly as he put the young American down quickly placing a hand on the man's back steadying him as he staggered, in the soft glow generated by Arthur's armour.

As sore as he was inside the armour he didn't envy the young man that had rode in his arms in their desperate escape. Arthur had been forced to drive his armour to it's limit only the heavily shielded trickle of energy from Lady Triton allowing it to sustain a bone jarring cross country speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour for the last six hours. Settling on a small boulder he watched as the young American staggered around the cave slowly working the life back into his limbs. Turning his attention inward Arthur frowned as he worked on sending information, reassurance and questions over the power link to Lady Triton. The link wasn't suited for that especially in stealth mode, it was relatively easy to hide a low level power transmission as wide band white noise, but adding in a coherent signal, even a scrambled one ran the risk of creating a pattern noticeable to many Silver Millennium artifacts.

Arthur had started to use a wider bandwidth link, but Lady Triton had quickly overrode that, he hadn't had much time to describe what they had found under and around Neuschwanstien Castle and sending thought images were out of the question, but the terse verbal description mostly stolen from his American companion or the lost Lady Titan had only added to the turmoil in the Avalon council.

Lady Titan's death hadn't just been a shock to her oldest daughter, the woman's grand son was in a stage production and hundreds of Avalon's citizens had been present when the Titan Henshin rod had appeared and upstaged it. One thing you could say about the Silver Millennium rulers was that they liked to give a good show.

"It's going to be worse than I thought isn't it." broke from his internal thoughts and the slow dialogue with Lady Triton, Arthur looked up at his American companion and after several seconds of confusion realized what the most recent and probably last Knight of the round table was speaking of and said "Yes. Sir Jones what we discovered and those that died mean that this war is going to be far worse than anyone thought."

-

** Howard melton **


End file.
